


Times Gone By

by panther



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-11
Updated: 2014-10-11
Packaged: 2018-02-20 19:34:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2440379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/panther/pseuds/panther
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everyone around Harry loves pumpkin flavoured things and celebrating. Harry  himself can't bring himself to relate to them when it is the time he keeps losing everything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Times Gone By

When the pumpkins first appear on the Hogswarts tables Harry feels something stir in his stomach, something uncomfortable. Pumpkin just simple and not something that bothered him but the pumpkin flavoured treats and carved images make him think of his earlier childhood. It is not often at all that he feels sorry for Dudley Dursley. Dudley is a cruel spoiled child who gets everything given to him by his parents while Harry is ignored but Harry is not blinded by his anger. He realises that Dudley is also a victim of his parent's. Dudley just doesn't know that the way Harry knows. Magic has always been a banned topic at Number Four. This meant that while other children went Trick or Treating, Harry and Dudley remained indoors. While Harry lay quietly in his cupboard as normal Dudley screamed and cried and demanded that he got to go too. 

At five or six Harry is glad Dudley is finally being denied something too. At eleven he has pumpkin pie handed to him and thinks Dudley is missing out because of him. Then again, Dudley is at boarding school now so maybe he is finally getting to join in for this holiday. Maybe he is sitting eating pie at the same time Harry is. Harry starts to think he would like that. There is a part of him that hopes he is just so he can't claim that Harry has ever denied him anything. 

Halloween is meant to be a happy and fun time in the both worlds. Somehow it is the very holiday that connects the cousins more than anything and it is in the opposite way. It is the time of year that Dudley doesn't what he wants and the time of year that Harry lost it all. Him losing it is the reason Dudley loses out too. Something makes Harry think that his Aunt Petunia would allow Dudley to dress up if there was never any worry that Harry would turn out magical. During the day he gets through distracted by school and by night his adrenaline gets hum by facing the troll and find a new friend. Sleep brings the nightmares. He is hyperaware of Halloween being the night his parents were murdered. He is hyperaware of people staring at him in the Common Room and being happy because they think he saved them when he didn't _do_ anything. At his age would have still been stumbling around and speaking in few sentences. How is he have meant to defeat Voldemort? That pisses him off too. His parents died because a wizard they won't even talk about yet he gets harassed? 

The pumpkin pastries and cake and goodies are still on the table come November first and with Ron on one side and Hermione on the other he has to calm himself down before he blows up the table. The Muggles don't know any better but everyone around him do. They celebrate murder. Whether it is his parents being murdered or him murdering Voldemort they _celebrate_. When the papers arrives the whispers get louder so he ignores every copy of the Prophet at all cost. Sometimes things change and events that were fun before are not anymore. If people quietly celebrated the downfall that would be one thing, and something he could avoid but Halloween is something he can never escape. 

It gets harder with every year and worse when they know Voldemort is back. He can see those who believe want him to defeat him again and those who don't want him to be killed. Harry just wants to mourn his parents in peace, and at the place they were just students as he is. 

It feels like insult to injury when he finds out it is the day that Sir Nicholas de Mimsy-Porpington died. Harry can't think of him as anything other than that for weeks. Yet Nearly Headless Nick doesn't seem to care about Harry's status at all. Nick doesn't seem to care about a lot other than Gryffindor's reputation and his Headless Hunt but to Harry that means a lot. He doesn't talk about the war. He doesn't talk about his parents. Then, when he does make a fuss over Halloween it is over his own death and has nothing to do with Harry other than he sees Harry as a friend. It isn't that Harry is _Harry_ just that Harry is _human_.  
It doesn't get any better when he becomes a teen, in fact it is worse because the year started bad and then got worse rather than being relatively ok until Halloween. Dementors have them all on the edge and it doesn't take long for Harry to realise they are at Hogwarts because of him. He puts on a show of being happy around his friends but his dreams are filled with green light and screams when he does catch naps. Beyond that he ticks it off as yet another Hogwarts Halloween filled with poison and dread. One time is a one off, two a coincidence. By three he feels cursed and wonders if his Divination class means more than he thought.  
He eats anything put in front of him to try and dodge the feelings of the dementors. Then there is the slashed portrait, the strain, the pain and then he finds his innocent godfather went to jail, his parents were murdered, he got sent off to abuse in a muggle home, a family friend lost all his support and he became a hero. Then people wonder why by his fourth year he can't face pumpkin pasties and as a protest he just has tea at breakfast, lunch and dinner to make a point. Harry dreads Halloween before it even comes. He dreams of the past and everything going wrong.  
Then his name comes out of the Goblet of Fire and he vows never to attend another feast at Halloween or to celebrate it in any way. If he lives and a future partner wants to celebrate fine but not Harry. Never again.


End file.
